Of Colour and Music
by MapleFlavouredIce
Summary: Colours had always been an instrumental part of Red's life, the world around him a personal basket of crayons to pick and use during his travels. Red/Green originalshipping


Colours had always been an instrumental part of Red's life, the world around him a personal basket of crayons to pick and use during his travels. Conifers were spindly creatures in his mind's eye, and when he sat down in the brush, he would see fingers of harlequin push their way forth from the limbs of bistre. Flowers would make themselves known amongst the tangle of digits, cerise and regalia in nature – oh so bête noire.

A starly would perch itself on a branch, and the painting would crack and Red would gaze with childish impudence before picking up another crayon. The hues would rush back, lapping quietly at his feet and kissing hungrily at his eyes; flowing back to the undressed arms of the sapling. Eventually the bird would flit above head, form a bright yellow shade permanently painted in the boy's imagination.

The youth would continue this trend for most of his childhood, bringing his poliwag and bulbasaur to partake in the creative process, their personalities splayed as poliwrath and venusaur in the picture. The colours would emerge with minds of their own, silly splashes of majorelle and dubious dots tenné.

Rushing home the boy would go, creating words in his mind for the things he had seen, mixing the paints in his room and showing his mother the liquid pigments and off she'd go to the store with a list of hues she could only hope to imagine. And then back she'd come with paint brushes and canvas and tubes of one-of-a-kind that nearly ran her €300. Shuttered in his room Red would stay, weeks on end. Eventually the easel found its way to the clearing, and the sanguine eyed boy found no reason to return home unless for food or sleep.

And then the brush charred and the clearing was no more. A schoolboy came through, chasing a pretty little thing of tea rose with his charmander not far behind. Broken shards of soft pearl and rosso corsa shattered beneath feet no larger than the owner's hands and the mew escaped; leaving behind a trail of ash, and the remains of a wooden frame. Catch gone; the intruder gazed around at the lost garden of hesperides and at the paints that were now weaved across the ground.

Jade eyes soon found themselves gazing towards the sky, back giving an uncomfortable squelch as a body tackled the boy with milk chocolate hair. Sanguinary eyes, glazed with a ferocity well known to the colour, seemed to growl at the infuriatingly lax pair before them. Red restrained himself to only seizing the hem of the older's t-shirt, cloth dyed in a colour only to be described as burnt persimmon. It was not burnt enough for the younger youth's liking, wanting the top to sear the boy beneath him in a heat he knew the colour could produce.

"What the _h-hell_ is your problem, kid?" The one with jade eyes spoke up, stuttering his speech as he tried to appear mature, privy to adult knowledge. There was no response from Red, as he continued to search those eyes, and as he finally stood up he swiped a dejected finger through the paint puddle. The older one could only just look on, bemused. "Name's Green," a thumb was pointed towards a puffed chest, "what's yours?" No reply.

"Anybody teach you manners-" A hand covered in paint gripped onto the speaker's wrist and Red's head jerked towards the direction of his home, follow me playing in his eyes. Green obliged, grumbling about silent, black haired, demon-eyed children (no idea what he had gotten himself into, the tango of carmines and chartreuses).

It was after that day, that something sparked behind Green's brain and told him to come back the next time and the next. Even when adventure had taken full reign of his life, the jade eyed male would stop by and grab the paints gathering dust and place fingers to canvass; writing the notes that filled his head in steel blues and lava reds and sunglow yellows. Red's mother would admonish him to take the piece (_don't worry darling_, she'd say in that syrupy voice, _keep it for yourself_, she'd urge him out the door with a bag of candies and sweets, _give some to Red_, she'd whisper – forgetting that he, _he_ could hear the words she spoke, so unlike the son she had raised).

The boy of sanguine had become master of the paints and Green master of the sounds. The two made a daring pair; Red painting the colours in his head and the boy with jaded eyes composing the music he heard from canvass caressed. There would be no wisteria notes, no vanilla hums in the air without drips of icterine and circling lines of eton.

Neither had the other's gift, but Red, Red was such a special case. He could not hear the notes; but Green, Green could see colours on his own. Those songs of ecstasy and desolate wishes did not go through the younger's ears.

Often times the chocolate haired male sat next to the music-less one and they embraced, reminded of the conifers that had burnt away so long ago. He would speak and never be heard, keeping eyes blank so that the words remained silent secrets.

The colours, instrumental part of Red's life, disappeared eventually; and he found himself atop a mountain of ghosting whites and aged lace. Snow kept him a bitter companion, his cheeks too chilled to turn that amaranth he used to remember seeing in the mirror (when he was filled with ideas and paints and bursting words). Too easy had it been to escape, moved by the colours that haunted his dreams while he was curled on the bed - alone as the older worked late yet again. Forgotten was Red's notebook, left at the bedside table, pen with rose quartz lace thrown into the drawer like an old pair of socks. The black haired one was left now, atop Mt. Silver with unpainted colours and unspoken words (aching with restless torment).

It was early one morning, when the sun peeked over darkened crests, when music floated into his mind and colours clouded his eyes. Two arms slipped around his falu jacket and lips moved across the exposed nape above the hem and below the midnight locks. Wave of baritone notes took him under, into a sea of laughing music. Carmine drowned his sight in a pleasurable sort of way, jade peeking through a tangle of notes. There was sound, so gorgeous and deep, so rich and loving. Green was before him, pace sharpening, an unfamiliar ba-dump ba-dump in the backs of Red's ears. The younger looked at Green with wonder, eyes sparkling and dewy, and all the other could manage was a smile that was a colour not even Red could put words to.

It was the colour of music, that smile. It was fast and sharp, but gentile. It spoke of wonders and simplicity. It held lonely undertones that surged to create a cacophony… The colour, it was Green. It had always been there with its strokes and drips and dots. The canvasses of Red's youth embodied.

Tears ran down Red's face, the verdigris drops so vivid - brighter than in his childhood - and he grabbed those locks of his favourite kind of chocolate and kissed those lips of that lovely shade of French rose. Kissed them until he could feel the heat of their shade, as they turned into burning burgundy.

A murmur filled the cavern as the music hushed down, and all Red could do was watch the eyes across from him while repeating the only three words he could manage. The only three words he would ever have to say.


End file.
